


Heart of the Wood

by Fontainebleau



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Dryad AU, Inspired by whereverigobillygoes' art, M/M, Nature Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau
Summary: This was written as a response to whereverigobillygoes' beautiful image of Dryad!Billy and Merman!Goody, which you can find below, and for the Mag7Weekend prompt, 'Be mine, valentine'.





	Heart of the Wood

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a response to whereverigobillygoes' beautiful image of Dryad!Billy and Merman!Goody, which you can find below, and for the Mag7Weekend prompt, 'Be mine, valentine'.

_Mine_ : the rust-red fox panting alert and sharp-toothed through the dark.

 _Mine_ : the oak tree, long roots twisting deep, splitting rock.

 _Mine_ : the spotted thrush tapping a snail against a stone.

 _Mine_ , the darting minnows and the lurking pike, the bursting buds and the fading flowers, the clear spring and the silty depths, the soft grass and the catching thorn, noonday’s heat and midnight’s chill.

 _All mine_.

He is the deeps of the wood and the sunlit glades, the gliding stream and the cascading falls; he is the blossom on the branch and the ripening fruit, the worm that coils in the earth and the woodmouse that scurries under the fallen leaves. He curls his toes to taste the sweet brown earth, feels the breeze ruffle the leaves like a hand through his hair. He bounds with the squirrel from bough to bough, pecks and squabbles with the sparrows; he dances in the sun with the glowing furry bees and darting dragonflies; he lies gazing at the moon in the dewy dark, watching it sail and snag in the spiders’ beaded webs.

Seasons come and go: sometimes it’s autumn, leaves spotting and curling, chestnuts bursting brown and ripe from their prickly cases; sometimes it’s high summer and the trees drowse and dream in the heat. Sometimes ice locks the fish beneath the surface and berries flare like fire on the snowy branches; sometimes it’s spring, the glades carpeted with blue, and life burning up the fuse to burst into green flame.

He guards. He plays. He watches. He grazes with the shy deer, tumbles with the rabbits, swarms with the ants and strikes with the heron. He’s young: he bursts from the winter den to taste the air and chase his brothers through the pale green ferns; he’s old: he falls with a crash to lie bursting with fungus, feeding back down into the roots. He is. He is all, and all is his.

\--

His forest is inviolate: he does not welcome strangers. He knows _man_ , sour with smoke, biting iron blade in his hands. _Not here_. If men come wandering, to hunt, to fell, to take, then the forest has a lesson they may learn. Paths that twist and shift and lead nowhere, the bright avenue that gives way to sunless shade, the shift of shaggy fur and the glint of a bright eye. _Bear_ , says the forest. _Boar. Wolf_. Sucking quagmire, hidden scarp, sunken cave. _Trap_. The forest teaches them, and they tell it to their children: _not there_.

\--

Where is the forest’s heart? Is it the stillest place, where ancient trees rise like pillars and the air is green and hushed? Is it the hidden cave behind tangles of ivy and briar where the she-bear licks her newborn cubs? Is it where water spills white and alive down a tumble of rocks, where trout strive against the current and the kingfisher flashes from the branches? Or is it here, where the river bends and pauses, pooling deep, where dragonflies zip and vanish among the shafts of light and sun falls through the leaves to dapple a glade of soft grass?

At first it’s a tickle, a playful brush, a teasing tang of salt, the bluegreen sea come wandering to kiss the green-brown pool. Then it’s a splash, the flip of a leaping fish, breaking the silence of midday. A hand, fivefingered, splayed over the mossy rock; a tossing head scattering a rainbow of drops. A shimmer of silver scales beneath the surface. A visitor. A strange thing.

He comes closer: he’s a trout hanging all but motionless under the lip of the bank, fins fanning the stream; he’s a bright-eyed robin perched on a twig, head tilted in curiosity; a water-beetle skating the surface on a raft of legs.

A fish, but not a fish, pale and mottled, sporting, stirring the water with a muscular tail. It skims below the surface, doubles and twists to burst upward in a glittering spray. It raises its arms, shakes drops from wet hair; it tastes the air and turns its face to the sun that dances through the branches.

A man, but not a man: this has no flavour of humankind, cloth and metal and greed: this creature tastes of brine, of joy in freedom, all rushing water and piscine energy. It intrigues him. A diversion. A novelty. A wonder, in his tranquil pool.

Fishman dives again, nothing left but spreading rings that lap the river’s edge. And with a thought, he’s there, one moment just a log, a rock with mineral veins, a tuft of flowering grass; the next, a man, strong and delicate, hair trailing into blossom, eyes bright as a bird, stretched at leisure with his arms in the pool.

The water ripples gently; no movement, but still a tantalising prickle of salt in the river’s flow. Something brushes his hand, too quick to seize; a fish? A clump of floating weed? And suddenly, where his own face was, another appears, rises through the ripples to meet him, and he’s looking into a pair of green-blue eyes.

‘You’re pretty,’ says fishman. He knows. He spends time with his reflection, dipping his arms in the water to reach himself, still as a watching heron. Flowers tumble in his falling black hair and his smile is enticing, but if you try to kiss him he shatters apart and hides.

A caress along his arm makes him shiver, and in a blink the riverbank’s bare: only a fallen log, a stone crowned with grass, a pale bough dipping in the water. Fishman backs away, confused, and a quiet laugh ripples through the leaves; there in the glade, where sun dapples the grass, he lounges against the trunk of a tree, limbs brown and smooth as a young sapling, his face a play of shadows in the bark.

‘So far away,’ laments fishman. ‘How are we to become friends?’

 _Friends?_ A rabbit hops and pauses to wash her ears. ‘Come closer, if you wish.’

Fishman flips his tail. ‘I cannot walk on land.’

‘A pity, then.’ The voice already fading into the rustle of the leaves as a jay spreads its wings and claps upwards.

Fishman sports. He lunges his tail, powerful, dives barrelling through the water like an otter, chasing the fish. He hunts, but his hunt is a game. At last he surfaces, struggling dace in hand, and lies in the shallows where a flat rock soaks up the sun and a green willow trails her branches in the water. Fishman’s teeth are sharp: he eats the fish in neat red bites like a fox. When he’s done he yawns and lies back, water lapping at his waist, and stillness returns with the darting dragonflies.

Water ripples and the delicate leaves of the willow shiver in the breeze, bending low to brush his skin. Fishman’s eyes are closed, else he might see the branches bend under stretching limbs, two beams of sunlight become two bright eyes, and fingers come to dance among the leaves, exploring the swell and dip of muscle and the delicate rosebuds of his chest. The weight in the tree sends the branches dipping lower, so leaf-fingers can puzzle out where smooth skin shifts imperceptibly to rough silver scale, and lower still, a curious touch sliding –

Caught, in a hand, and sea-green eyes snap open, laughing up into the face in the branches. ‘Bold, little spirit. Are we so well acquainted now?’

The face is upside down, its smile inviting. ‘We could be.’

Fishman turns, slips, flips. ‘Come in the water with me.’

 _Come in?_ He’s already there, the flat stone on the river’s bed, the crested newt rowing with arms and legs, the pondskater dimpling the water’s surface, the current that caresses fishman’s scales with careless intimacy.

Willow-tree lifts, unburdened, and a head breaks the surface of the pool, four limbs glimmer green through the water, hair a trail of water-blossoms; fishman flashes past, a teasing undulation against his legs, and he twists and chases, an otter again, up to the boiling cauldron under the falls and down to the slow deep channel under the cliff. They test each other, limbs and tail touching and tangling, arms catching like the weed that sways in the stream, hair running through fingers like the flowering reeds.

It’s new, this creature; it dodges and teases, tickles and traps, and it shows him his river all over again, where the beavers’ dam traps the current, where the deer come down to drink on delicate nervous feet, where the water spreads among rushes and yellow flags, alive with frogs and dabbling ducks.

When they tire they come again to the shallows, fishman half hauled out on a rock, great blue-silver tail refracting through the water, fins trailing in the current.

Out on the grass he lies curled, basking like a snake, eyes bright as dewdrops, arms and shoulders round and strong as a young tree. ‘What are you?’

Fishman’s laugh is like the ripples on the water. ‘Oh, I am far from home, little spirit. Far from the sea’s deep, from the restless shift and roll of ocean; far and further, up the sweetwater currents, as the river rolled past me to join the sea.’

A bird turns its head, perplexed; a snake-tongue tastes the air. The river _is_. The river does not _go_. The river is here in the forest. _Mine_.

‘What is ocean?’ he asks, and fishman spins him tales, long rolling waves of words, a half-understood melody of wreck and whale, cavern and sandy floor, pearl and fishbone.

‘What is a ship?’ he asks, and a leaf set on the water’s surface sails spinning past.

‘What is a tide?’ and ripples lap against his rocks as fishman flexes his shining tail.

‘What is a shark, a pearl, a reef?’ Fishman’s laughter gurgles like the stream. A wolf, a bead of dew, the pool where the minnows gather?

Saltwater meets sweet, questions laid aside, and the wind shivers in the branches, ash keys spiralling slowly down at the cold salt burn of a kiss.

\--

Sunrise and moonset, days of hunt and chase, of kisses and careless touches, up and down the river, from gliding calm to crashing falls, from spreading pool to white cascade. Nights of rest and winding tales, as fireflies dance and the fox laps bright-eyed at the stream. He has learned _companion_.

He cannot always be in the water: sometimes he must be other, bounding through the topmost branches with the squirrels, his tiny claws sharp against the bark, tufted ears raised; sometimes he must forge through the worm-rich soil with the moles in the secret dark; sometimes he must range and hammer with the woodpecker, his drumming echoing in the still of the afternoon. And while he does, fishman dives and discovers, spars with the otters, lazes under the falls or sleeps in the current, hair swaying like weed.

All creatures dream: the hare in her scrape dreams _chase_ , whiskers and tail twitching, the hook-jawed pike on the river’s bed dreams _hunt_ , the caterpillar under a leaf dreams _flight_ : the trees dream, long slow reveries of reach and spread and sun; the forest dreams, dreams of long ago, mammoth and tiger and giant dragonfly; he knows dream.

Fishman dreams, coiled still in the deep water, lulled by the slow currents; but fishman’s dreams he cannot see. Fishman’s dreams are restless; he thrashes, tail churning mud, strains against invisible bonds, wrists caught in the weed; he gulps for breath, choking in the silty flow, until he comes crashing fearful awake, shivering and afraid.

Two hands, to hold, a shoulder, to lay a head, a breathing body and a tail mottled like a trout to wrap and comfort. ‘What did you dream?’

A tumble of words, treachery, tide, reef, regret… But all too strange, to hard to know.

‘Listen,’ says the breeze, gentle in the treetops. ‘Calm,’ says the moon, sailing low through the branches. ‘Hush,’ says the river, lapping slow, ‘let me rock you to sleep.’ He has learnt _friend_.

Sunset and moonrise, fishman is there, swimming, hunting, basking, chasing; and one afternoon, as rain patters on the river’s skin and the leaves drip slow, in a cave behind the shimmering waterfall, a dance of silver-blue and woody green, arms and tails bound fast as ivy; a watersmeet of fresh and salt. Fishman’s teeth are sharp, but they play over his skin light as a feather from a bird’s wing; scale rough as bark twines with skin soft as the petal of a flower, lips sweet as a sunripe fruit. The light on the water shatters and breaks, and the breeze sighs; he has learned _love_.

\--

He leans his head on fishman’s shoulder. ‘Summer will come, little spirit.’

 _Summer? Summer is not now_.

‘Summer will dry the grass and wilt the flags; the sun will climb to run the river shallow and crack the mud along the shore. I would stay,’ murmurs fishman as they rock together under the swelling moon, ‘but I cannot.’

‘Come with me. Come to the deeps, to the stormtossed waves, to the tides and the gulls. Ride with me in the breakers, tossing white manes of spray. Dive down with me to the caverns of winding eels where treasures lie: shells and drops of amber, pearls and coral. Be my love, asleep on a sandy bed where the sun filters through the blue water and turtles row sleepily overhead; follow me into the embrace of the depths, where fish trail glowing lamps and jellyfish float like moonlit clouds.’

He does not understand. Treasures are here for the taking: rubies ripe on the branches and pearls on a spider’s web at dawn, the living diamonds of the water’s spray, the sapphire of a kingfisher’s wing. _Stay with me_.

‘The ocean is endless: there are forests of kelp as old and tall as your trees, hunting sharks and barracuda more fierce than wolves, shoals of bright fish singing like birds, and flowers of coral opening to the sun. I will show you towering rocks where seabirds scream in tens of thousands, white sands ringing islands in a sea of green weed, shores where crocodiles drift among the mangrove roots. Come with me, down the river, rushing with the current, till rich salt scours our gills and all rivers become one.’

He cannot. Where the river curves broad beside the fields, where poppies drop their bleeding petals into the current, there he cannot go. Where the water leaps down the canyon and hurls itself headlong among the rocks, there he cannot follow. The forest is his and he is the forest. _Stay_ , breathe the leaves. _Stay_ , ripples the water. _Stay_.

‘Come with me,’ says fishman, and finds himself alone, beside him only a floating raft of branches, a jewel-eyed frog that hops to shelter in the reeds, a damselfly that hovers a moment, then darts away.

\--

Forest-spirit cannot be lonely: he’s the chattering jay walking sideways down the branch, the rooting sow with her striped children, the complex web of a fungus winding through the earth; he’s the roiling water at the foot of the falls and the glassy rock behind its curtain, the woodmice scuttering trails in the leafmould and the owl gliding silently from her tree. He is rich with life, but there’s an ache, an absence, like a fallen tree, a nest robbed and empty, the smoking aftermath of a fire. No pale flash in the pool, no beat of a powerful tail to stir the river, no imprint of wet shoulders on the rocks, no ringing laugh to fill the glade. _My companion. My friend. My love_.

Tree and twig, bole and bud, wood and water, leaf and loam: all is his and he is all. And yet the forest’s heart is silent. He has learnt _before_ and _after_. He does not drift and play as a moth in the warm night’s breeze: he is the tangling briar, the nettle and the thorn. He does not bask in the summer’s heat: he is the crow hunched watchful and still. He has learnt _alone_. He lies over the pool, seeing himself, remembering, but what need for arms, for hands, for cheek or lip? Form shimmers and changes, dissolving into water, each drop as salt as a tear.

\--

Now is autumn and the river rises, though the otters play alone; rain falls and grass grows green again, squirrels hoard their winter nuts, the young boar feint and clash, but his face is turned away.

Late sun filters through paling leaves, and on the river’s bed a caddisfly in its case of grit walks on threadlike feet. It stops: among the tumbling pebbles, a tower: a great whorled shell, tall and pointed, its inner lip shading to the pink of dawn. It pauses, exploring, then whisks away as a hand descends to draw up its discovery.

Among the fallen leaves a hedgehog snuffles busily; a bounty of seeds lies all around, but this is strange, its pod rough and blue; she flips it over with her snout and, finding it empty, wanders on; but a finger stoops to trace the watery gleam of its lining.

Fanning in the stream, a minnow discovers a shining ball, round as the moon, mouths curiously at its smooth surface – here is one, and here another, and another… The minnow darts away as a shadow falls above it, following a trail of glistening pearls.

Water swells and sparkles, tail flips and slaps, a ringing laugh … ‘Did you think I would desert you, little spirit? The moon must wax and wane, and the tide must ebb and flow: but I will come back to you.’

The forest comes awake, starlings whirring upwards in a startled cloud; deer raising their heads, alarmed, and rabbits flee for cover; and in the water, a joyous meeting, the blue-green sea come to kiss the green-brown pool. Two heads, two rippling tails; a chase and dance, a melting embrace of love regained. A promise, low, 'I will always come back to you.'

\--

Where is the forest’s heart?

It is here, where the river bends and pauses, pooling deep, and in its depths the ocean’s pledges: pearls and drops of amber, shells and coral.

Here, where dragonflies zip and vanish among the shafts of light, and blue-silver scales refract beneath the water; here, where sun falls through the leaves to dapple a glade of soft grass, and he bends above the pool to take his lover in his arms.

His strange thing, his wonder, his ocean beloved. _Mine_.


End file.
